The convergence of TVs and boxes connected to the Internet has produced unexpected changes in consumer behavior. Many users consider Internet access to be a means to provide them with even greater choices for content—such as allowing them to switch to Over-The-Top (OTT) content rather than watch traditional TV programming. Additionally, Internet access provides them with the ability to research, investigate, and find bargains for products and services that interest them. Users spend even more time “channel surfing”, jumping from content to content, or looking for inexpensive products or services matching their needs and budgets. By not “locking-in” to a specific channel or content stream for an extended time or hopping from one merchant to another, they are in fact not behaving the way service providers and advertisers expect them to—which minimizes the effectiveness of traditional advertising campaigns.
Advertisers want to maximize the use of the Internet portal available to them. They push intrusive advertisements over the portal often based on cookies and information that they have collected from users activities on their websites that are in effect “recommendations” for the user to pursue an action. The user is forced to watch these advertisements if they want to see the desired content. These advertisements show up as banners, pop-ups, or pointer position-based advertisements that are difficult to bypass on the TV. These advertisements are in addition to the campaign based advertisement the user is already forced to watch if they view the live TV content through the TV network portal.
Content providers use the same Internet portals to invade user privacy by recording user actions on their servers. They use this information to bombard the user with advertisements and explicit content or merchandise “recommendations” hoping for a sale. They also sell or share user information to varying degrees as well as their “recommendations” for commercial benefit.
Although the recommendation provided by content providers may provide some benefit to the user, the recommendations are handicapped by fundamental limits on the “quality” of the data they use to provide the recommendations. The content providers use all the means currently available to them to record user actions. For business and legal reasons, this data is typically not shared with other content providers so there is no opportunity to compare and refine the accuracy of the data based on a broader sampling. In order to increase accuracy, each provider “tweaks” or customizes their methods—which often runs up against the problem of invasion of privacy. There are many methods used by content providers to determine “user preferences” from a distance. Regardless, the information deduced by a content provider at a distance will generally be inferior when compared to the information that can be collected locally where the user operates; which is to say at the point of origin of the user data.
Existing techniques for analyzing user preferences can be split into two broad categories characterized by vendor or provider. The first category includes vendors such as Amazon, eBay, and Netflix that offer commerce or content as a service or for sale. Such vendors develop and maintain “user profiles” based on: (1) what the users search for in merchandise or content, (2) “visits” information such as reviews or product information, and (3) the activity recorded in their accounts. Using these profiles, vendors can make “suitable recommendations” in the hope of increasing sales.
The second category includes vendors such as Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Apple whose primary business is to dispense information or provide services related to the information. Such vendors' offerings include search engines, information databases, and application marketplaces that users routinely access. These vendors desire to determine and maintain track of user behavior so they can provide the most relevant and current information on a search query, fastest access to the database, and the newest applications in their application marketplace for sale.
All of these vendors employ techniques whose scope is limited to what the user does on or through their websites. They use sophisticated algorithms that rely on information such as, how a user initiates the search subject and the key words used, navigation over the results offered, position of the mouse pointer, how much time the pointer spends on a particular position, the number of clicks on links formed within a chain of users (member's friend list) and so on.
User devices currently available in the market (e.g., Set-Top-Boxes (STBs), PCs, laptops, smart phones, tablets, and so-called “Smart TVs”), whether purchased through retail or supplied by service providers, are typically configured by the manufacturer or retailer to go to the manufacturers or service provider's server on the Internet, the Internet Protocol (IP) based private network, or 4G—Long-Term Evolution (LTE) wireless network. When Internet is selected on a “Smart TV” purchased from a retailer, for example, the User Interface (UI) displayed will be the one supplied by the manufacturer. Similarly, when an IP STB provided by a TV service provider is turned on it will display the service provider's UI. In both cases the UI is driven by a server owned by another party whose interests might be different from that of the user. While the other party may be focused on driving the user to download music or movies from their “preferred” content supplier, that supplier may not be the best fit to the user. This only offers limited choices to a user and does nothing to resolve the problem of user privacy or reduce the manual processing of information required to locate the best alternatives available across the Internet that match the detailed and accurate personal preferences of the user.